Round and round. Over and over. Suit and countersuit. This is the monotonous, high-stakes back-and-forth between highly paid attorneys in the smartphone patent wars.

Ericsson believes some of the LTE technology Apple uses in iPhones and other devices infringes on its own patents. Apple sued Ericsson in January, saying that the communications technology used in its products doesn’t depend on the Ericsson patents. Ericsson countersued just two days later.

Of course, all this wrangling isn’t really about who owns what; it’s about the amount of money Apple will pay Ericsson to license the patented Ericsson technology. It’s kind of like how generals attack each other on the battlefield in an attempt to gain ground that can give their bosses leverage at the bargaining table thousands of miles away.

Now Ericsson has stomped its feet loudly enough to convince the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) that it should investigate Apple’s use of its technology.

“The products at issue in the investigation are certain wireless standard compliant devices,” the ITC said in a statement today, “including communication devices and tablet computers, including certain Apple iPhones, iPads, and other cellular-enabled products that use the 2G GSM and 4G LTE telecommunications standards.”

It’s not likely anything game-changing will come out of the investigation, but it could give Ericsson some PR points and maybe a little more leverage in the licensing negotiations.

As Martyn Williams of IDG News Service pointed out, patent battles in the courts often take forever to play out, sometimes leaving the lawyers arguing about technology that long since became obsolete — all while, of course, still being well-paid to keep the arguing going.

But the ITC’s decision to investigate raises the stakes somewhat for Apple. The ITC has the power to ban the importation of products it believes violate patents, which could have an immediate and painful effect on sales.

A new study adds some empirical firepower to the idea that poor patent laws are crushing innovation in the technology industry. Researchers from the London School of Economics studied citations from patents that were invalidated by U.S. judges and found that invalidation increased the number of subsequent innovations in technology, but not in pharmaceuticals.

“Patent invalidation has a significant impact on cumulative innovation only in the fields of computers and communications, electronics, and medical instruments (including biotechnology). We find no effect for drugs, chemicals, or mechanical technologies.”

The effect is greatest in the electronics industry. For instance, Linkedin VP of Engineering Alex Vauthey recently explained why much of the company’s software is open source. In essence, it’s better when the entire Internet community can help build an application. “LinkedIn really embraces open-sourcing,” he said. “We’re actually leveraging the community of software developers that help with that. With traction, the software gets more secure, more reliable. At the end of the day you use better software to build applications.”

Additionally, open source software also helps out their employees, no matter where they end up next. “We want our employees to leave LinkedIn as much better professionals than when they arrive. By being able to contribute to an open-source project, you have the opportunity to get the code that you’re writing looked at by a lot of people.”

The wide variety of contributors makes open innovation much more effective, as opposed to granting a monopoly to one firm in the form a of patent.

But in pharmaceuticals, there isn’t the same community of innovators, and a single drug can take billions of dollars to manufacture. In this industry, the researchers found, patents do not harm innovation.

Interestingly, the researchers also controlled for so-called “patent trolls,” entities that exist solely to sue others for patent breaches. “We ﬁnd that only 12 patent cases in our sample involve a troll. When we drop these observations and re-estimate the model, we obtain estimates that are essentially identical.” In other words, patent trolls aren’t the only reason bad intellectual property policy harms the tech industry.

Indeed, startups seem especially vulnerable to bad patent policy, because they do not have the legal or economic negotiating power to deal with big business. “The results show that bargaining breakdown occurs when it involves large patentees,” the researchers write. “Small ﬁrms are less able to resolve disputes ‘cooperatively’ without resorting to the courts.”

A university professor is suing Square for fraud and patent infringement, essentially claiming that he was ousted.

Earlier today, Washington University associate professor of engineering Robert Morley filed a lawsuit against Square cofounders Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey. According to the St Louis Post Dispatch, Morley has a long-running dispute Square.

In 2010, Square and its cofounders filed a lawsuit against Morley’s company, REM Holdings 3 LLC, alleging McKelvey was wrongly left off a patent for the card reader device. That lawsuit remains pending, and the U.S. Patent and Trade Office is currently reviewing other patents related to Square’s technology.

Square is a small plastic device that fits onto iPhones, tablets and other devices, making it easier for small businesses to process credit card payments. The San Francisco-based company is considered by financial analysts and the press to be a strong candidate for an initial public offering.

According to the 2010 lawsuit, McKelvey came up with the idea for the credit card reader and contacted Dorsey. He then reached out to an old friend, Morley, for help developing the prototype.

Morley is alleging that he alone invented the card reader and should be recognized as a cofounder of Square.

By email, his lawyer Austin Curry, a principal at the firm Cassady, Caldwell and Curry, said that Morley would seek “monetary damages that are commensurate with Dr. Morley’s role as a co-founder of Square and royalties for Square’s ongoing patent infringement.” Curry said Morley is also hoping to be rewarded “equitable relief in the form of a constructive trust of shares in Square.”

“Square’s business has centered around using Dr. Morley’s invention, but at no point has Square had any authority to use Dr. Morley’s patents,” Curry added.

Intellectual property expert Efrat Kasznik said this is a problem that many tech companies grapple with. “This story goes to the heart of inventorship rights,” said Kasznik in an interview. Kasznik, who runs a practice called the Foresight Valuation Group, also advises budding entrepreneurs at the Stanford Business School.

Kasznik sees parallels with this case and a lawsuit against the founders of Snapchat. If you’re not familiar with that drama, a former friend of Snapchat founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy claims he invented the idea of the disappearing messages and helped found the company.

“If McKelvey is found to be a coinventor, and Square the proper assignee, then there is no merit for this case. The patent is not clean, with all these inventorship and prior art issues. The lawsuit was probably filed as an extortion measure to reach a high settlement, not unlike the Snapchat case that we have recently seen filed. A lawsuit that probably never would have [been] filed if Square was not the mega successful startup that it is today,” Kasznik explained.

Square spokesperson Aaron Zamost issued the following statement to VentureBeat:

“It’s not surprising that Morley would file another desperate, baseless patent lawsuit given how poorly his initial claims have been received by the patent authorities.”

More information:

More information:

]]>0Another ugly cofounder dispute: Square sued by Washington University professorAnaqua secures $25M to guard your trademarks, patents, and other valuable creationshttp://venturebeat.com/2013/10/17/anaqua-secures-25m-from-bessemer-to-protect-your-ip/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/17/anaqua-secures-25m-from-bessemer-to-protect-your-ip/#commentsThu, 17 Oct 2013 19:24:32 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=839987Managing intellectual property can be a time-consuming process, especially for major enterprises with thousands of inventions, patents, and trademarks. That’s why companies like Microsoft, Ford, and Coca-Cola turn to Anaqua for help. Anaqua, which just announced a $25 million investment from Bessemer Venture Partners, makes software that helps global enterprises file, manage, and protect their […]
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Managing intellectual property can be a time-consuming process, especially for major enterprises with thousands of inventions, patents, and trademarks. That’s why companies like Microsoft, Ford, and Coca-Cola turn to Anaqua for help.

Anaqua, which just announced a $25 million investment from Bessemer Venture Partners, makes software that helps global enterprises file, manage, and protect their intellectual property. It sells the software-as-a-service (in the cloud) to more than 20,000 users, who use Anaqua to manage more than $500 billion in intellectual assets, according to the company.

“It’s always been challenging for businesses to manage IP and trademarks. But these days, it’s a strategic advantage to manage them well,” said Bob Goodman, a partner at BVP who will join Anaqua’s board of directors.

In July, Anaqua received a “significant investment” from Insight Venture Partners, which AllThingsD pegs at $100 million. The company is based in Boston, Massachusetts with offices in London, UK and Pau, France.

This is a guest post by Mary Juetten, chief executive of Traklight, and Efrat Kasznik, president of the Foresight Valuation Group

The ‘Jumpstart Our Business Startups’ Act, otherwise known as the JOBS Act, hit another milestone with the recent lifting of the 80-year ban on solicitation. At our last count, there were over 1,000 crowdfunding platforms awaiting the US-wide equity crowdfunding ‘Title III’ SEC regulations, anticipated to be released in 2014. At the same time, reward-based crowdfunding is hitting all time records, with major players such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter helping startups raise millions of dollars.

Both types of crowdfunding platforms have been hailed for making funding more accessible to early-stage startups. Over $2.7 billion has been raised in more than one million campaigns across all types of crowdfunding platforms in 2012, an increase of 81 percent over 2011. However, little has been written about the fundamental implications such campaigns have on intellectual property (IP) protection and on startup valuations, two areas that are critical to the survival of every startup.

IP protection: Practice Safe Crowdfunding™

There are countless examples of people posting campaigns without intellectual property (IP) protection who had their ideas copied or stolen. One recent case involves a crowdfunding campaign for a watch. Copycats undercut the price with a similar product before the campaign was even over! The company had little recourse because they had not protected any of the IP associated with the unique watch design and name.

All types of IP need to be identified before submitting a business plan for equity crowdfunding, or posting a rewards-based campaign. When soliciting investors online, it’s critical to ensure that ideas are protected before revealing too much information online, particularly if patents are being contemplated in the US or globally. In addition, there are other types of IP like names, processes, customer lists and digital assets (including websites, pictures and copy) that can potentially be protected by trademarks, copyright or trade secrets.

There is also a very real risk of accidentally infringing on other people’s IP while crowdfunding. When preparing a campaign, copyrights need to be secured for any pictures, copy, video or songs that are used. A recent campaign raised about $10K and was slapped with an $8,000 fine for infringing on a Google image.

Lifting the veil: Startup valuations revealed

The JOBS Act lists approximately ten requirements for companies, including entity formation, background checks, shareholder listing, financial statements, share valuation, and a business plan. This provides a great deal of transparency into startup valuations in funding situations that, until recently, have been done behind closed doors. It is too early to predict how company valuations are going to change due to that increased scrutiny, however, many founders of early stage companies may not be too thrilled about having to disclosed business plans and valuations on a public platform.

One area that might be impacted directly are equity compensation plans such as Employee Stock Option Plans (ESOP) where stock options are issued to early employees and investors with very low exercise prices, which are set to equal the price of common stock at the time the options are issued. The equity prices flowing through crowdfunding platforms will create a new set of early stage valuation comparables, data that have largely been missing from the public eye before. This can potentially have huge implications on the pricing of ESOP plans, particularly in the early stages.

When it comes to reward-based crowdfunding, while these don’t establish an equity price which can be considered a direct comparable, they serve a very important role in market validation of the execution and scalability of the business model. Price points, customer traction, sales funnel, order fulfillment, and other critical information can be gleaned from a rewards-based campaign and incorporated in the next iteration of the product, or serve as validation of key business model assumptions.

Since many valuations of pre-revenue startups rely on key performance indicators (KPI) and not on financial fundamentals, KPI validation is critical in building investor confidence and can indirectly impact valuations and funding.

Efrat Kasznik is president of Foresight Valuation Group, a Silicon-Valley based Intellectual Property (IP) consulting firm focused on assisting companies with valuing and managing their innovation. She is a Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and is a frequent speaker and author on topics related to IP valuation and strategy.

Efrat has also been involved as a co-founder and adviser with several startups, in the fields of cleantech, media and telecommunications.

Mary Juetten is founder & CEO of Traklight.com, a Phoenix based, software company that provides cost-effective, online IP identification tools and resources that enable inventors, creators, entrepreneurs and small businesses to identify and protect their IP.

Mary consults and mentors start-ups in the areas of planning, business models, and IP identification and is active in national crowdfunding organizations CFPA and CfiRA.

SR Tech Group LLC is claiming that Google scooped up a number of speech-related patents today.

The portfolio includes a patent covering a speech interface for search engines and a patent that covers a system for modifying a speech recognition program, the SR Tech Group said in a news release. SR Tech Group is partnered with VoiceTechGroup, a Cincinnati-based company that develops speech and voice recognition technologies.

In May, Google demonstrated its “conversational search” features at its developer-focused conference. Conversational search — as Google calls it — means people can ask a question, rather than typing in search terms to get the answer for a query.

To take advantage of this tool, you need to use Google’s Chrome web browser and a working microphone. From there, you can start by saying “OK, Google …” and proceed to ask it a question or make a demand.

The search giant has been investing in this technology for some time to compete with Apple’s Siri offering.

The press release offers a statement from Google’s Allen Lo, Deputy General Counsel for Patents:

]]>0Google scoops up speech recognition patents (updated)UK authorities launch crime unit to tackle online piracyhttp://venturebeat.com/2013/06/28/uk-authorities-launch-crime-unit-to-tackle-online-piracy/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/28/uk-authorities-launch-crime-unit-to-tackle-online-piracy/#commentsFri, 28 Jun 2013 12:45:59 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=771740A new Intellectual Property unit will hunt down "organized crime gangs" who "illegally profiteer on the backs of others' endeavors."
]]>Can’t wait to watch Brad Pitt face off against a Zombie pandemic? You’ll have to shell out for a movie ticket, as torrent sites may soon be a thing of the past.

The UK government is taking a heavy-handed approach to online piracy, and is launching a new Intellectual Property crime unit in September. The new unit will be targeting operators of torrent sites.

The news was announced in London this morning by Intellectual Property Minister Lord Younger and City of London Police Commissioner Adrian Leppard today. In a press conference, Leppard said this is first of its kind, and is “ensuring that the UK stays at the forefront of intellectual property enforcement.” He described online piracy operators as “organized crime gangs” who “illegally profiteer on the backs of others’ endeavors.”

Over 2.5 million in funding has been set aside by the UK’s Intellectual Property Office. It will be used by the City of London Police to establish and run the unit.

According to Leppard, the goal is to safeguard jobs for content-creators, but also ensure citizens’ “computer safety.” With fewer operators running these sites, Internet-goers will be less likely to be exposed to unauthorized copyrighted content.

In the UK, The Creative Coalition’s TERA Report (2010) found that if copyright infringement continues unabated, up to a quarter of a million jobs in the UK could be at risk by 2015.

In the U.S., the problem Economic consultancy firm Frontier Economics recently estimated that U.S. Internet users alone annually consume between $7 and $20 billion worth of digitally pirated recorded music. As a consequence of online piracy, the U.S. economy loses approximately $12.5 billion in total output annually, according to a 2007 study by the Institute for Policy Innovation. Check out this infographic on the true cost of piracy.

This isn’t the first major crackdown on Internet piracy. On Wednesday, U.S. authorities seized 177 domain names for websites selling counterfeit trademark merchandise. According to press reports, another 151 sites were shut down by the European Police (Europol) in coordination with authorities in Belgium, France, Romania and Britain.

President Obama called to congratulate China’s new president Xi Jinping yesterday, reportedly taking the opportunity to talk to the leader about the increasingly tense cyber security situation developing between the two countries, according to the New York Times.

Xi Jinping successfully completed the transfer of power and became China’s president on Thursday, opening a door to new conversations with Washington. Despite many other issues the U.S. must hammer out with China, cyber security has been top of mind for many government officials and rightfully so. A number of high-profile companies have been hacked, tracing the attacks back to China. This includes the The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Security firm Mandiant also recently released a report saying China has been attacking the U.S. for a number of years, specifically one group within the Chinese military.

The New York Times reports that President Obama specifically mentioned stealing U.S. companies’ proprietary information and intellectual property.

On Monday, U.S. national security adviser Tom Donilon said in a speech in New York that the international community should not stand for action like this any longer and that China needs to come to the table to discuss cyber security rules.

“From the President on down, this has become a key point of concern and discussion with China at all levels of our governments,” he said in the speech.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chuying responded on Tuesday saying the country is “willing, on the basis of the principles of mutual respect and mutual trust, to have constructive dialogue and cooperation on this issue with the international community including the United States to maining the security, openness and peace of the Internet.”

]]>0President Obama reportedly discusses cyber security with China’s new presidentWhy copyright law won’t be able to keep up with the crazy world of 3D printinghttp://venturebeat.com/2013/02/27/3d-printing-copyright-law/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/27/3d-printing-copyright-law/#commentsWed, 27 Feb 2013 15:30:46 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=6209973D printing is moving fast, and existing copyright law is having a rough time keeping up.
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If you’re trying to understand how existing intellectual property law applies to 3D printing, let me save you some time: It’s a complete mess.

From top to bottom, 3D printing raises more legal questions than it answers. There are lots of companies making 3D printing hardware, even more companies offering online repositories of 3D designs, plenty of services that will print things for you, and almost zero precedent for disputes among them. From a legal standpoint, 3D printing is the Wild West.

While that may sound liberating for such a young industry, it’s also potentially dangerous. There’s a very real chance that the lack of any regulation could be replaced with bad regulation. And that could have some dire effects on the whole industry.

Bad laws, Weinberg says, emerge out of a basic misunderstanding of how industries work. And for a young technology like 3D printing, misunderstandings are going to be common.

How bad could it get? Consider a law that would force companies like MakerBot and 3D Systems to shell out a percentage of their sales to offset the piracy factor, with the money going into a fund to compensate makers of plastic toys, like Mattel and Disney. Or a law that required 3D services to adopt software that limits the number of times 3D design files (STLs, etc) can be printed or which printers can print them.

For people who are excited about free, unfettered access to 3D printer technology, those are some scary possibilities. But Weinberg is convinced that 3D printers, on the whole, will come out all right.

“These are general-purpose machines, and the companies that make them are fairly well-protected,” he said.

Copying, printing, infringing

Right now there are quite a few sites that act as repositories for 3D designs. MakerBot’s Thingiverse, Shapeways, and i.materialise all invite people to upload their designs and share them with (or sell them to) others.

But once you let people upload their own files, you expose yourself to all of the risks that come with that freedom, such as files that infringe on copyrights. (Consider all of those Yoda figures that Star Wars fans like to put on Thingiverse, for example.)

Above: One 3D-printed interpretation of the Penrose triangle. (Source:Thingiverse)

Sometimes the process is a bit more complicated, though. Thingiverse hit a major milestone in February 2011, when it got its very first takedown request. The complaint came from Ulrich Schwanitz, a designer who claimed that a Thingiverse user had uploaded “his” design to the site without his permission. The problem? The design in question was a model of the Penrose Triangle, created in 1934.

Another example: Earlier this month, 3DLT, a 3D design marketplace, posted designs on its site without the permission of the design owner. 3DLT eventually blamed the problem on sample listings that went live before they were supposed to, but the damage was already done: 3DLT was forced to give a public apology and reaffirm its commitment to protecting the intellectual property of all designers — not just its own.

“3DLT is committed to providing a consumer-friendly, 3D design marketplace where creative assets are safely protected and designers are properly compensated for their intellectual property,” the company said in a statement to VentureBeat.

But while Thingiverse and 3DLT are already dealing with IP issues, Todd Grimm, president of consulting firm T. A. Grimm & Associates, says that the concerns over 3D printing are, at this point, overstated.

“That future of consumers making their own designs and firing up their personal 3D printers to pirate objects is years, or even decades away,” he said.

Unlike most people who pay attention to 3D printing, Grimm isn’t convinced about the technology’s short-term potential to disrupt, say, the kids toys or spare car parts industries. And neither, he says, are the industries themselves.

“Honestly, most companies may not even be afraid of it. They’re really not thinking of this now,” he said.

The pirates discover 3D printing

Companies may not be paying close attention, but the days when physical objects can be pirated as easily as Weezer songs are coming, and the Pirate Bay is already pushing things along.

It won’t always be this way, of course, and it’s only a matter of time until the piracy of physical objects will be as common as the piracy of music and movies is today.

How will companies handle this? That depends on how well they adjust to the realities of IP law.

Public Knowledge’s Michael Weinberg says one of the big challenges for all object industries will be to collectively recognize the realities of intellectual property as it relates to both digital and physical objects. The first step? Realizing that IP law is nowhere near as robust as we think it is.

“People assume that everything they sell is protected by IP, but that’s often not the case with physical things,” Weinberg said.

“Companies are going to have to recognize when they have legit claims and when they won’t — and most of the time, they won’t,” he added.

This is something established industries won’t like to hear, of course and, if history is any indication, most of them will react by firing their legal teams in all directions.

Weinberg, however, hopes that they won’t. The music and movie industries have already shown us what happens when fear drives ligation: Lots of people get sued, lots of money gets spent, and no one really has much to show for it.

Instead of suing the 3D printing industry, smart companies of the future are going to figure out how to profit from it.

]]>0Why copyright law won’t be able to keep up with the crazy world of 3D printingStarting a company? Don’t succumb to these 3 common legal issueshttp://venturebeat.com/2012/12/19/avoid-legal-hot-water/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/19/avoid-legal-hot-water/#commentsWed, 19 Dec 2012 20:06:07 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=593293Guest:When launching a startup, legal issues often get brushed aside in order for founders to focus on building the product. But making the wrong legal decision early on in the process of starting your company may lead to thorny problems in the future.
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This is a guest post by startup lawyer Jennifer Berrent

When launching a startup, legal issues often get brushed aside in order for founders to focus on building the product. But making the wrong legal decision early on in the process of starting your company may lead to thorny problems in the future. Frequently, issues can be avoided by taking action in three key areas: choose the right entity, allocate equity and protect your intellectual property.

Choose the right entity

Once you are ready to move forward with an idea, you should formally form your startup as an entity. One important benefit of setting up an entity is that you can protect yourself from liability, since, in general, only the assets of the entity (rather than your personal assets) would be at risk. Depending on your business, either a C-corporation or a limited liability company (LLC) would likely make most sense. Almost all companies that are going to seek venture capital financing elect to be C-corp.

However, more and more companies that expect to have early and significant cash flow are electing to start out as LLCs. You should discuss which entity is right for you with your tax and legal advisers.

Allocate equity

Startups often have more than one founder or associate who contributes early on to the success of the enterprise. It is critical to have a clear understanding among founders, other early contributors and key employees regarding how the ownership of the entity will be allocated. This not only prevents misunderstandings that can erupt into messy legal battles, but also assures investors that claims of ownership from early business partners will not impact the value if their investment.

Not only does a frank and early understanding of the ownership of the entity avoid future problems, but if done correctly, vesting and other mechanisms can provide incentives to achieve critical desired goals.

Ideally, you should form your company and issue shares to founders, key contributors and employees as soon as possible to steer clear of any costly taxes or payments involved in acquiring the stock later when valuations may be higher.

Protect your intellectual property

Make sure that all intellectual property is owned by the company. Obtain licenses of any property obtained from third parties, such as a university. Have all founders, collaborators and future employees sign an assignment of invention agreement and a non-disclosure agreement, assigning any IP related to the business — whether developed before or after formation — to the company. You want to avoid disputes over ownership, as well as a potential competitor from a disgruntled employee or consultant down the road.

In order to make sure these agreements are enforceable, you must provide some consideration in the form of cash or equity. An important and sometimes overlooked step is to document any and all agreements, and properly issue equity.

By taking care of these critical legal matters now, you free yourself and your business partners to concentrate on turning your startup into the thriving company you envision.

Jennifer Berrent is a partner at WilmerHale in the Corporate Practice Group and Emerging Company Group.

She has been working with emerging companies in particular for more than 15 years and is focused on serving as trusted advisor to entrepreneurs and the NYC entrepreneurial community.

]]>1Starting a company? Don’t succumb to these 3 common legal issuesCrowdfunding campaign hopes to help startups steer clear of patent trollshttp://venturebeat.com/2012/10/15/crowdfunding-campaign-launches-to-expose-thousands-of-hidden-patents/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/15/crowdfunding-campaign-launches-to-expose-thousands-of-hidden-patents/#commentsMon, 15 Oct 2012 20:14:04 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=557333Patent analytics firm IP Checkups wants to expose the patent portfolio owned by Intellectual Ventures, one of the largest patent holders in the United States.
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“The idea is that this information will enable startups and investors to make more informed decisions,” said Matt Rappaport, founder and CEO of IP Checkups, in a phone interview. “There is not a lot of transparency in the intellectual property field.”

Ultimately, they plan to create an online database of all the patents held by Intellectual Ventures and its shell companies. Using this data, analysts will be able to extrapolate broader trends, pinpoint the companies that are the most litigious, and point entrepreneurs in a direction that will help them avoid a costly and time-consuming intellectual property suit.

According to Rappaport, Intellectual Ventures owns about 40,000 patents in diverse fields from medical devices to wireless technologies. Many of these are hidden in more than 1,200 “shell companies”, which are used as a vehicle for business transactions and lawsuits. Rappaport told me that he has contacted Intellectual Ventures to inform them about the project but has yet to receive a response.

The alternative for investors and companies is PatentFreedom, a subscription-based service that claims to provide its customers with a competitive edge in intellectual property disputes.

]]>0Crowdfunding campaign hopes to help startups steer clear of patent trollsIt’s time to take a hard look at the term ‘intellectual property’http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/21/its-time-to-take-a-hard-look-at-the-term-intellectual-property/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/21/its-time-to-take-a-hard-look-at-the-term-intellectual-property/#commentsTue, 21 Aug 2012 23:30:16 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=515246It's time to examine the idea of "intellectual property" a little more clearly, especially when patent law dominates business headlines and the outcome of the Apple-Samsung trial holds enormous implications for the tech industry.
]]>Gaming execs:Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on April 3rd!

The language we use affects the way we think. Political strategists know this: Once you succeed in setting the terms of the debate, you’ve won.

It works in business, too. One of the trickiest turns of phrase in modern business is “intellectual property.”

In many ways, it’s a useful phrase, and it’s deeply embedded in modern economic life. Besides, the abbreviation “IP” is so much easier to say than “patents, trademarks, and copyrights.” But as free-software advocate Richard Stallman points out, the phrase glosses over some important distinctions between different kinds of ownership, and it grants a misleading sense of permanence to the rights it covers.

That’s why I say it’s time to examine this concept a little more clearly, especially when patent law dominates business headlines and the outcome of the Apple-Samsung trial holds enormous implications for the tech industry.

Click here if you’d like my weekly column sent directly to your inbox. It takes less than a minute to sign up, and you’ll get the stories before they’re published on VentureBeat.

I realize that this question puts me in a tiny minority of business writers — maybe even on the lunatic fringe. Almost everyone agrees with the notion that patents, copyrights, and trademarks are a kind of property. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office defines IP by writing, “It is imagination made real. … It is an asset just like your home, your car, or your bank account.”

But when even Google is talking about patent reform, it might be time to get a little more serious about this discussion — and to get some clarity about the terminology.

Let me explain: I’m not calling for the abolition of intellectual-property rights. I believe patents and copyrights are critical tools for ensuring that creators get fair compensation for their works of invention. VentureBeat pays my salary, and that of a dozen other writers, thanks to copyright. Silicon Valley’s 50-year technology boom would not have been possible without patents. One of the first things VCs ask (the smart ones, anyway) when examining a new investment opportunity is whether the company owns IP, and how defensible it is.

Patent examiners are incredibly overworked, and they often grant patents to ridiculous “inventions” that have no business being patented. When patent disputes arise, they’re often judged by a jury of 12 additional nonexperts, as the current Apple-Samsung case is.

Meanwhile, corporate copyrights now last for 95 years in the U.S., a term that gets extended every time that Mickey Mouse is just about to enter the public domain. (Thanks, Disney.) Unlike patents, which are intended to give a temporary monopoly to an inventor and then provide public access to it after a limited period, copyrights last essentially forever: Any copyrights granted today will outlive almost all of us reading this today.

When we lump these twin distortions together under a single term and dignify it with the same kind of language we use for real estate or personal property, we give it a false concreteness. Ninety-five-year copyrights start to seem like the natural order of things. Arguing for a shorter patent term sounds almost communist.

The result is a huge diminution of the public domain and a stifling of the kind of creative borrowing that all invention, artistic or technological, depends on.

We need patents and copyrights. We also need a better system for evaluating and granting patents. And we need a shorter term for both.

Let’s start by dropping the term “intellectual property” and talk about what we really mean: patents, copyrights, and trademarks.

In an effort to recuperate some of the money from the Motorola sale, Google could sell off Motorola’s Home division, which includes cable modems, set tops, video processors, and some other related assets. Light Reading’s report indicates that Google has hired Barclays Capital to manage the sale, which could take place as early as November, with bidding beginning in October.

The real question about the sale is whether Google will chose to include some of the valuable IPs related to cable devices. Motorola hasn’t exactly let its cable division become stagnant in terms of innovation. The company debuted a new DreamGallery software to eliminate crappy TV user interfaces back in May. Still, the cable/home division’s IP could prove useful in the future for Google, which is growing its own smart TV platform, Google TV.

Light Reading’s report states that Google can expect to bring in about $2 billion from the sale of the home division, provided that some IP is included. Depending on the level of interest, the search giant could split up the sale of the home division into a few parts. Such a move could attract interest from Pace, Juniper Networks, and Ericsson AB, according to the report.

]]>0Google mulls sale of Motorola’s cable division5 tips for developing a patent strategyhttp://venturebeat.com/2012/08/05/5-tips-for-developing-a-patent-strategy/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/05/5-tips-for-developing-a-patent-strategy/#commentsSun, 05 Aug 2012 16:10:36 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=503734Guest:When you're neck deep in starting a new business, you may not take the time to properly protect your inventions. Here are five easy tips on how to quickly develop an intellectual property strategy.
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When you’re neck deep in starting a new business, you may not take the time to properly protect your inventions. As a result, you could see your intellectual property stolen or you could be sued for inadvertently stealing the intellectual property of others. Here are five easy tips on how to quickly develop an intellectual property strategy, specifically with respect to patents.

1) Give each team member an information disclosure form

The first key step to getting a patent is identifying ideas that are potentially novel and inventive. Discovering and understanding your employees’ inventions as early as possible will enable your patent lawyer to draft earlier applications with more accurate and comprehensive disclosures, which means stronger patents. Circulating an information disclosure form to your team will help your startup learn about technology being created internally.

2) Carefully review employment and independent contractor agreements

Review your startup’s employment and independent contractor agreements. Make sure that your employees and contractors have an obligation to assign their rights in any inventions that they develop in the course of their work to your startup. It may be difficult for your startup to obtain a patent on an invention, particularly if the employee or contractor involved no longer works for your startup, if their agreements don’t explicitly obligate them to hand over the rights to those inventions.

3) Create a team to quickly review new inventions

Because filing for a patent for a piece of technology is expensive, you need to figure out whether these new developments are worth patenting. When forming a team, include a diverse set of people in this discussion — someone from management, engineering, marketing, and sales. Because marketing and sales folks are often the first to disclose new inventions outside the company, it is important to keep them in the loop on patents. Contact your patent lawyer when your patent team agrees that a particular development is worth patenting. Then, your patent lawyer can determine whether it is indeed patentable and, if it is, can prepare and file a patent application.

4) Keep all of your documents organized

Once you have started to seek protection for your patentable inventions, it is essential to keep everything organized so that you know what intellectual property your startup has created. That means keeping copies of your intellectual property-related documents (e.g., the information disclosure forms, employment and contractor agreements for inventors named in your patent applications, issued patents, technology licenses and other contracts) in a dedicated, organized business file. This can be as simple as a folder on your computer or in a sophisticated document management system. Just having all this information within easy reach will make it easy for you when a potential investor wants the due diligence on your IP.

5) Incentivize team members to innovate

Consider giving members of your team some encouragement to think about whether their work is also generating patentable inventions for your startup. You may want to consider providing your team members with some kind of financial incentive, such as a bonus that is paid when a patent application is filed and the invention is granted a patent.

Jay Mandal and Nitin Gupta are co-founders of LawPivot, a question-and-answer service for legal advice.

]]>05 tips for developing a patent strategySilicon Valley’s secret weapon for patent law raises $2Mhttp://venturebeat.com/2012/07/27/silicon-valleys-secret-weapon-for-patent-law-raises-2m/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/27/silicon-valleys-secret-weapon-for-patent-law-raises-2m/#commentsFri, 27 Jul 2012 18:06:40 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=498374At a time when technology companies are spending large sums of money battling it out over patents, a new technology promises to let you know your chances of winning a patent suit before you even start. Lex Machina is a machine learning technology that took Stanford researchers six years to develop, and it brings Big Data […]
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At a time when technology companies are spending large sums of money battling it out over patents, a new technology promises to let you know your chances of winning a patent suit before you even start.

Lex Machina is a machine learning technology that took Stanford researchers six years to develop, and it brings Big Data to one of the most complex and convoluted areas of the law.

“Lex Machina crawls hundreds of thousands of legal documents to predict outcomes for intellectual property cases,” said Owen Byrd, a spokesperson for the company, in an interview with VentureBeat.

The company just announced that it has raised $2 million in first-round funding, led by Portola Valley’s X/Seed Capital.

Byrd referenced the recent Kodak case to explain how clients are using the technology. The company has data from 130,000 court cases and crawls the Web to extract documents from court records. Byrd told me that if Kodak’s lawyers had used Lex Machina, the technology would have unearthed similar cases, and likely would have found that the digital imaging company would not have won its suit. Alternatively, an analysis of the data may find that companies have a better shot of winning the case in a different state, or with an alternative district judge.

Byrd told me that in future, the technology will expand to other areas of federal law, including antitrust cases, bankruptcy, and tax law. The company will also use the funding to expand its team.

Other participants in this round include Jeff Hammerbacher, founder of Cloudera, and Naval Ravikant of AngelList.

]]>1Silicon Valley’s secret weapon for patent law raises $2MPatent trolls calling? Here’s how Build.com CEO Chris Friedland fought backhttp://venturebeat.com/2012/07/09/patent-trolls-fight-back/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/09/patent-trolls-fight-back/#commentsTue, 10 Jul 2012 00:01:44 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=486707We now know that patent trolling costs the US economy $30 billion a year, give or take. And patents can effectively be used to stifle competition. What’s an embattled CEO to do when the patent trolls come calling? Fight like hell, if you’re Build.com chief executive Chris Friedland, who’s more than a little peeved by the […]
]]>We now know that patent trolling costs the US economy $30 billion a year, give or take. And patents can effectively be used to stifle competition. What’s an embattled CEO to do when the patent trolls come calling?

Fight like hell, if you’re Build.com chief executive Chris Friedland, who’s more than a little peeved by the massive influx of patent claims he’s had to deal with.

“Frankly, the absurdness of some of this stuff is just ridiculous,” Friedland says. “Are you going to patent wiping your ass?”

Friedland started Build.com in the early 2000s. Selling it in 2007, he did the unusual thing and stayed on as CEO. Today it’s the second largest online retailer of home improvement products in the U.S., doing $350 million in annual business.

“Only Lowe’s is bigger than us,” Friedland told VentureBeat.

That made Build.com a tempting target for so-called “patent trolls,” companies that acquire patents for the purpose of licensing intellectual property (as opposed to creating and selling products in the marketplace).

“About two years ago we were approached by our first patent troll with big threats over our web server,” says Friedland. Build.com was using the popular open source software Apache to run its websites.

“That scared the parent company, and scared us.”

New to patents and patent legislation, the company felt it could be facing an existential threat. “It’s kind of scary,” Friedland told VentureBeat. “If someone has a patent that is so broad, they could shut down your business … your business could go to zero.”

Eager to put legal troubles behind them, and wanting to avoid distractions from their core business focus, the company paid an undisclosed amount in the high five figures.

Big mistake.

It was like spilling blood into shark-filled waters. Almost immediately, the company was swarmed with patent claims.

“All of a sudden out of the blue we’re battling five different suits … I think because of the success of this troll, our category got targeted,” Friedland says. “The trolls came in massive force, and the patents went from semi-reasonable to just crazy.”

One of the companies was Patent Group LLC, a Texas-based firm that has targeted multiple firms, including 9 separate claims against 140 different companies in a single week in 2011 … the week between the passage of the America Invents Act — a bill intended to limit patent trolls’ power — and the signing of the bill.

Suffice it to say, Friedland is not a fan, calling Patent Group “sons of bitches” and “fucking trolls.” (VentureBeat reached out to Patent Group for a comment but has not yet received a response.)

The “invention” that Patent Group attempted to assert against Build.com was patent number 6603490, the same one the company is attempting to sue TicketMaster for right now. In Friedland’s words: “basically anything that has rotating images on the internet.”

This time, Build.com decided to fight. They’re not the first company to fight back in recent months.

Just this month, HipMunk announced it is suing i2Z Technology LLC. i2Z attempted to collect for United States Patent No. 5,345,551, which deals with syncing and presenting data from multiple sources in application windows, and HipMunk chief executive Adam Goldstein said “we do believe in fighting against spurious intellectual property suits.”

When the company decided that the patent was so egregious it could not settle, it pressed the issue in court … and won. In fact, Build.com recently received not just a dismissal but a dismissal with prejudice, meaning that Patent Group LLC cannot appeal or re-try the case.

That victory, however, was just the beginning.

Four other patent holding companies were seeking payments from Build.com, including Select Retrieval LLC. Select Retrieval is an infamous troll that sued more than 100 companies in 2011 for patent number 6,128,617, a way of retrieving and displaying information from a database.

Some would say that getting data from a database and displaying it online is obvious. Friedland agrees, but he’s a little more graphic:

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Build.com is not against legitimate patents, Friedland says, but not only did he feel this patent was obvious and ridiculous, the company’s tactics were “bullying, and we’re not going to accept bullying.”

Instead of going Lone Ranger this time, Build.com assembled a joint defense group with 14 other online retailers and is now working to invalidate the patent.

“If it was a real patent, we’d license it — we license patents now,” says Friedland.

But the cost is significant and is stifling innovation, so Build.com is no longer settling. And Friedland’s recommendation for anyone else caught in similar circumstances?

“Create a joint defense group and fight it together.”

If a recent Apple-Motorola lawsuit is an indication, companies may not have to spend good money on bad lawsuits for long. Federal appeals court judge Richard Posner recently threw out the suit, saying “It’s not clear that we really need patents in most industries.”

Until that opinion proliferates in the legal and political establishment, however, patent lawsuits — legitimate or otherwise — will continue to be a cost of doing business.

In an interview with Reuters, Posner said that industries like pharmaceuticals have a better claim to patents since discovering new drugs takes a huge investment. That’s less true for software advancements, where companies benefit from being the first to unveil new technology — with or without patents.

“It’s not clear that we really need patents in most industries,” Posner told Reuters, adding that devices like smartphones often have thousands of features protected by intellectual property. “You just have this proliferation of patents. It’s a problem.”

Posner’s comments aren’t too surprising if you’ve been following the Apple v. Motorola case, which he volunteered to oversee. In his order dismissing the case last month, he wrote:

Neither party is entitled to an injunction. Neither has shown that damages would not be an adequate remedy. True, neither has presented sufficient evidence of damages to withstand summary judgment — but that is not because damages are impossible to calculate with reasonable certainty and are therefore an inadequate remedy; it’s because the parties have failed to present enough evidence to create a triable issue.

Posner said he had no interest in joining the smartphone generation. He used a court-issued BlackBerry when the Apple trial began in 2010, which he said made him neutral in the case. He’s since been upgraded to an iPhone, though Posner says he only uses it to check e-mail and call his wife.

]]>0Judge who threw out Apple v. Motorola case rails against software patentsOops — police searches at MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom’s house were illegal, judge sayshttp://venturebeat.com/2012/06/27/megaupload-dotcom-searches-illegal/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/27/megaupload-dotcom-searches-illegal/#commentsThu, 28 Jun 2012 05:57:49 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=481406The wheels of justice may grind slowly, but they do grind. Who they grind, of course, is another matter. And whether or not you believe that Kim Dotcom’s file-sharing business MegaUpload was a legal business or a thin front for profiteering from piracy, a New Zealand judge has just ruled that at least part of […]
]]>The wheels of justice may grind slowly, but they do grind. Who they grind, of course, is another matter.

And whether or not you believe that Kim Dotcom’s file-sharing business MegaUpload was a legal business or a thin front for profiteering from piracy, a New Zealand judge has just ruled that at least part of the search and seizure that resulted in the destruction of MegaUpload’s business and the arrest of Dotcom himself was illegal.

Oops.

One aspect of the search and seizure mission involved taking and cloning the hard drives of 135 computers in Dotcom’s $30 million mansion, under the authority of a general warrant. And that, says the judge, was over the line.

“These categories of items were defined in such a way that they would inevitably capture within them both relevant and irrelevant material. The police acted on this authorisation. The warrants could not authorise seizure of irrelevant material, and are therefore invalid.”

The current legal wrinkle in the Dotcom case is not likely to end the MegaUpload founder’s legal woes. But it is one ray of sunshine for the embattled entrepreneur, arriving soon after Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak showed sympathy for his situation.

One thing is certain: Lawyers are making a lot of money off intellectual property cases. Dotcom will be lucky to have anything left of his considerable fortune by the time this legal mess is cleaned up.

Of course, if you’re a movie company executive, you’d say he’ll be lucky to have his freedom.

]]>0Oops — police searches at MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom’s house were illegal, judge saysFaceporn wins battle against Facebook, a victory for all company names starting with “face”http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/22/faceporn-wins-battle-against-facebook-a-victory-for-all-company-names-starting-with-face/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/22/faceporn-wins-battle-against-facebook-a-victory-for-all-company-names-starting-with-face/#commentsWed, 23 May 2012 00:09:44 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=431996Gaming execs: Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on April 3rd! Facebook is learning that money and fame cannot buy you everything. The social network has been thwarted in its aggressive pursuit to sue any company […]
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Facebook is learning that money and fame cannot buy you everything. The social network has been thwarted in its aggressive pursuit to sue any company that uses “book” or “face” in its domain name, most recently against a porn site in Norway.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey S. White ruled against Facebook in a case first filed in 2010 against Norway-based adult social network Faceporn. Facebook requested full ownership of the domain name along with “an award of attorney’s fees and costs.”

Judge White felt Facebook was left without a leg to stand on, stating the social network “has failed to show that defendants, both residents of Norway, purposefully directed their conduct at California.” The judge recommended the motion be denied and the action dismissed for “lack of personal jurisdiction.”

This is not the first time Facebook has gotten in other companies’ faces. It has come after other sites with “face” or “book” in their names, including Shagbook, Teachbook, and Lamebook. So far, all of the lawsuits have been dead ends except for Lamebook, which ended with a settlement with Lamebook that left the parody site standing.

According to the report, Facebook currently owns ten trademarks with another seventeen pending approval. The social network even owns a trademark for the word “wall.” The company plans to continue its lawsuit against Faceporn in Norway, which could lead to a “likelihood of confusion” test.

]]>0Faceporn wins battle against Facebook, a victory for all company names starting with “face”Court docs show Android made less than $550M for Google since 2008http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/29/android-profits/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/29/android-profits/#commentsThu, 29 Mar 2012 19:47:31 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=409809Gaming execs: Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on April 3rd! Court documents provided by Google show the company made less than $550 million from Android between 2008 and the end of 2011. These figures pan […]
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Court documents provided by Google show the company made less than $550 million from Android between 2008 and the end of 2011.

These figures pan out to about $10 per Android handset, or roughly $135 million, each year.

iPhones and other Apple-made devices, on the other hand, put more than four times as much revenue in Google’s coffers during the same time period.

Last summer, Google indicated it may have been willing to settle out of court in the matter. An Oracle victory in court could have added up to billions in damages, and given that (as we’d long suspected) Google’s revenue-per-device figure is quite low, any per-device licensing fee would put a significant dent in Android-related revenue.

But Googlers reassure us the open-source operating system is still in no real danger. “From a consumer standpoint, consumers should not be concerned about losing their Android phone,” a Google spokesperson said in a recent phone chat.

“There’s no indication that Android is under threat… We’re actively pushing back on Oracle to preserve choice in the marketplace in the long term.”

Google announced its annual revenue run rate for Android had reached $2.5 billion late last year. At that time, the total number of Android devices activated worldwide had just reached 190 million.

]]>0Court docs show Android made less than $550M for Google since 2008Rep. Darrell Issa opens up secretive intellectual property “treaty”, ACTA, to the publichttp://venturebeat.com/2012/03/06/darrell-issa-acta-secretive-madison-open-treaty/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/06/darrell-issa-acta-secretive-madison-open-treaty/#commentsTue, 06 Mar 2012 14:59:53 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=399698While Americans were busy fighting the SOPA and PIPA bills at home, nations around the globe, including the United States, were signing on to ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which many in the world of technology feel is as bad or worse than the home grown piracy legislation. “ACTA represents as great a threat to […]
]]>While Americans were busy fighting the SOPA and PIPA bills at home, nations around the globe, including the United States, were signing on to ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which many in the world of technology feel is as bad or worse than the home grown piracy legislation.

“This agreement was negotiated in secret and many of its vague provisions would clearly increase economic uncertainty, while imposing onerous new regulations on job creators, Internet service providers, innovators and individual Americans,” Rep. Issa said in a statement emailed to VentureBeat this morning. “Opening ACTA to taxpayers and stakeholder in Madison will help gather crucial input, while delivering the transparency they deserve.”

Negotiations around ACTA actually began four years ago, but the Obama administration only signed on in October of 2011, joined by nations like Canada, Japan, Korea and Australia. As Rep. Issa sees it, this is both an issue of intellectual property and legislative process:

No Transparency: ACTA is a multilateral intellectual property agreement that was negotiated in secret, excluding American taxpayers and key stakeholders who would be impacted by it. Despite the fact that ACTA has huge implications for the public, until now few steps have been taken to give the public input into this process.

Circumvents Congress & the Constitution: While ACTA carries several provisions that directly affect U.S. trade and intellectual property law, the Bush and Obama Administrations appear to have violated Congress’ constitutional authority over policymaking in these areas. Adding insult to constitutional injury, the Administration refuses to even classify ACTA as a treaty, which would then require ratification by the U.S. Senate. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) raised these troubling issues in an October 12, 2011 letter to President Obama.

Vague & Far-Reaching: Like it’s domestic counterparts SOPA and PIPA, much of ACTA is vague, with consequences for individuals and stakeholders that could reach far beyond the agreement’s original intent. ACTA also contains no safeguards against wrongful cases of intellectual property rights infringement.

We’ve embedded the document below so that you can go over the fine print yourself. Section 5 beginning on page 15 covers enforcement of intellectual property rights in the digital environment. A few highlights we came across:

Each Party shall provide that, in civil judicial proceedings concerning the enforcement of intellectual property rights, its judicial authorities have the authority to issue an order against a party to desist from an infringementEach Party shall provide that, in civil judicial proceedings concerning the enforcement of intellectual property rights, its judicial authorities have the authority to order the infringer who, knowingly or with reasonable grounds to know, engaged in infringing activity to pay the right holder damages adequate to compensate for the injury the right holder has suffered as a result of the infringement. In determining the amount of damages for infringement of intellectual property rights, a Party’s judicial authorities shall have the authority to consider, inter alia, any legitimate measure of value the right holder submits, which may include lost profits, the value of the infringed goods or services measured by the market price, or the suggested retail price.

As the third most popular source of content on digital pin-board site Pinterest, Flickr and its photographers are subject to frequent acts of copyright infringement. But a site-wide update to Flickr promises to better protect members and their copyrighted works.

The Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site has just added Pinterest’s newly introduced do-not-pin code to Flickr pages with copyrighted or protected images.

“Flickr has implemented the tag and it appears on all non-public/non-safe pages, as well as when a member has disabled sharing of their Flickr content,” a Flickr representative confirmed to VentureBeat Friday. “This means only content that is ‘safe,’ ‘public’ and has the sharing button enabled can be pinned to Pinterest.”

Pinterest, as a refresher, is the digital pin-board site that encourages members to “pin,” via bookmarklet, the products, recipes, clothes, photos, and other items they love to collections called boards. The private beta site has grown into one of the most-trafficked social networks online.

The site has also given birth to the most inherently viral variant of the status update yet. This new breed of update, however, often promotes piracy as pins including copyrighted works spread from person to person.

To protect itself from copyright lawsuits, and appease disgruntled photographers and publishers, the young social media company introduced a snippet of code Monday that website owners can now add to their sites to prevent unwanted pinning. If a person on Pinterest attempts to share something from a site with that code in place, she will see a message that reads: “This site doesn’t allow pinning to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!”

Flickr can’t prevent all acts of photo piracy just by enabling the code — determined sharers will just work around the inconvenience and manually download and post images — but the act signals the site is proactively looking out for its photographers.

By way of the “pin,” accidental thieves have exchanged copyrighted content on digital pin-board site Pinterest. To thwart any lawsuits in the making, the much talked-about startup is giving disgruntled site-owners a way to stop piracy before it starts by blocking their images from showing up on Pinterest.

The acts of “pinning” and “repinning” (re-sharing a pin created by another user) have come under fire, especially in photographer circles, as tools for copyright infringement. Members can easily grab copyrighted works from photo-sharing or media sites and clip them to their boards. Pinned images often include attribution, but sources later get lost in the shuffle, and some members go on to use images on their blogs or websites. Plus, considering that Google is the second most popular source of pins, a sizable percentage images are likely misattributed.

Now, Pinterest is providing website owners a simple snippet of code, located in the updated help section of the site, to help them nip unwanted sharing in the bud.

“We care about respecting the rights of copyright holders. We work hard to follow the DMCA procedure for acting quickly when we receive notices of claimed copyright infringement,” co-founder Ben Silbermann wrote in a blog post Wednesday. “We understand and respect that sometimes site owners do not want any of their material pinned.”

The new code, when added to the header of any page, will prevent a person of Pinterest from sharing content from that page. If someone attempts to pin something from a site with that code in place, she will see a message that reads: “This site doesn’t allow pinning to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!”

The code should help the anti-Pinterest photographers and publishers of the world keep some of their copyrighted works off of the site, though it certainly won’t prevent the motivated sharer from downloading and re-uploading materials to Pinterest themselves.

Perhaps more importantly, though, the proactive measure could help Pinterest defend itself from copyright litigation. At the very least, the young company can now argue that it does not actively enable or encourage infringement.

]]>0Pinterest not a pirate anymore, helps site owners disable pinsApple wins “slide to unlock” patent clash against Motorolahttp://venturebeat.com/2012/02/16/apple-motorola-patents/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/16/apple-motorola-patents/#commentsThu, 16 Feb 2012 18:56:35 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=391651Gaming execs: Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on April 3rd! Apple is no stranger to the patent wars, and today it actually won two disputes in Germany against Motorola Mobility for its “slide to unlock” […]
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Apple is no stranger to the patent wars, and today it actually won two disputes in Germany against Motorola Mobility for its “slide to unlock” patent.

It is a familiar tale: one company is mad at the other for infringing on its intellectual property. In this case, Apple took mobile device manufacturer Motorola to task about three devices employing its “slide to unlock” feature, patented in Europe. The feature, which can be found on Apple’s iOS devices, allows a user to unlock the phone by swiping a finger across an image on the screen, in this case a grey arrow in a white rectangle.

The court found two of Motorola’s smartphones to be in violation of this patent, but a complaint on the Motorola Xoom tablet was dismissed. Foss Patents points out that the Xoom has a circular image for its unlock field. A person must make a similar circular motion to unlock the device, unlike iOS devices, which require a side to side swipe.

Apple has the right to ban the two infringing smartphones from being sold in Germany.

Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility was recently approved by the European Union, making this an Apple versus Google issue as well. It seems most Android phones use the “swipe to unlock” patent in some capacity, and after this win, Apple may have the chutzpah to keep the patent wars rolling. The company already has a case against Samsung in Germany concerning the same unlocking patent.

This is Apple’s first win against Motorola in Germany, which the handset maker will probably try to appeal, given the widespread usage of “slide to unlock” in many of its Android devices.

]]>0Apple wins “slide to unlock” patent clash against MotorolaClash of the titans! Infamous patent troll Intellectual Ventures sues AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobilehttp://venturebeat.com/2012/02/16/intellectual-ventures-sues-att-sprint-tmobile-patents/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/16/intellectual-ventures-sues-att-sprint-tmobile-patents/#commentsThu, 16 Feb 2012 17:57:37 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=391649Intellectual Ventures is suing AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, accusing them of infringing on 14 separate patents. In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware today, Intellectual Ventures, a private company that has made a business of producing, collecting, licensing and litigating over patents, has made its boldest claim yet. Intellectual Ventures told All Things D it decided […]
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Above: Nathan Myhrvold

Intellectual Ventures is suing AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, accusing them of infringing on 14 separate patents. In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware today, Intellectual Ventures, a private company that has made a business of producing, collecting, licensing and litigating over patents, has made its boldest claim yet.

Intellectual Ventures told All Things D it decided to go to court after several months of business negotiations broke down. That’s a nice way of saying that these companies wouldn’t pay to be part of the protection racket that IV is running (you pay us, we don’t sue you).

If the case does go to trail, it will be an interesting test of IV’s muscle. AT&T in particular has both the resources and the patent portfolio to put up a serious fight.

The companies who agreed to be “investors” in IV, meaning they will pay to stay out of court, Adobe, Amazon.com, American Express, Apple, Cisco Systems, eBay, Inc., Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Verizon, and many more. Of course having Google as an investor didn’t stop IV from suing Motorola Mobility, that is, going after a company Google had already announced it was trying to acquire.

Intellectual Ventures was founded by Nathan Myhvorld, formerly the chief technology officer at Microsoft. It has an in-house team of inventors who dream up ideas and file for patents. It does not produce any actual products, its business is in licensing its patent portfolio. It has been the subject of scathing reports by National Public Radio, which called it a patent troll. The company continues to ramp up its aggressive legal action against the biggest names in the technology business.

A five year-old legal battle between Viacom and Google-owned YouTube over copyrighted content continues to clog up the U.S. court system because Viacom, parent company of Paramount Pictures and MTV, believes there’s an important principle at stake, president and CEO Philippe Dauman said Tuesday.

Dauman, in an interview at the D: Dive Into Media event, defended his company’s ongoing litigation against YouTube, the purveyor of user-generated content, despite a 2010 federal ruling establishing that the video-sharing site is protected under the “safe harbor” provision of the U.S. copyright law, and is ultimately protected from liability so long as it removes infringing content at the request of rights holders.

“The U.S. justice system works in a slow and deliberate way,” Dauman said somewhat facetiously.

Viacom first brought suit again YouTube in 2007 for $1 billion in damages over the unauthorized use of Viacom content, inducing the use of clips from “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” between 2005 and 2008. The case was dismissed in June of 2010, in what was deemed a landmark victory for YouTube. But the decision didn’t sit well with Viacom, and the company sought to resuscitate the suit in October 2011.

Dauman referred to the status quo of needing to report infringed content as a “whack-a-mole system,” and argued for a more seamless technology solution that ensures copyright content is not infringed upon in the first place. He said Viacom is still fighting Google (a company Dauman referred to as “great”) out of principle, and is hopeful for a decision to a single legal issue that he believes will establish an important precedent for the entire industry.

The Viacom president, who fielded a variety of questions from interviewer Peter Kafka, also expressed his ongoing support for both the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). There was a lot of rhetoric and misinformation around SOPA and PIPA, Dauman lamented, that amounted to a “religious dogma” and created a “mob mentality.”

Ultimately, Daumen believes that PIPA, which would have been the dominant bill should it have passed, would have emerged as a very “responsible” bill.

“There are two great innovative industries where there are world leaders … that’s the content industry and broadly speaking the Internet industry,” Dauman said. The industries are symbiotic, he said, and should combine forces and create innovation. “We should be working together.”

]]>05 years later, Viacom still suing YouTube out of “principle”Curebit apologizes for theft, but leaves something outhttp://venturebeat.com/2012/01/30/curebit-apology/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/30/curebit-apology/#commentsMon, 30 Jan 2012 18:18:40 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=383700Curebit co-founder Allan Grant has posted a public apology to 37signals for stealing its design and code. Social-referral startup Curebit made the admittedly boneheaded mistake of ripping off design and assets from 37signals, one of the best-known schools of UI and startup thought-leadership on the Web. When the mistake was made public over the weekend, […]
]]>Curebit co-founder Allan Grant has posted a public apology to 37signals for stealing its design and code.

Social-referral startup Curebit made the admittedly boneheaded mistake of ripping off design and assets from 37signals, one of the best-known schools of UI and startup thought-leadership on the Web. When the mistake was made public over the weekend, a storm erupted on the Internet, causing many to question just how much traditional intellectual property rules come into play at small startups.

Grant initially excused his company’s actions, stating that the Curebits team was still small and was using the lifted design and assets in A/B testing.

This time omitting any excuses, Grant writes, “We did more than take inspiration from their design — we actually used html & css code, and hotlinked to images on their site. We apologize to David and 37signals for ripping off their work. It was stupid, lazy, and disrespectful of their creative efforts.”

Grant also posted the apology to Hacker News, the nexus of discussion around the issue, as there were issues with the Curebit blog over the weekend.

“I certainly gave them no permission,” wrote Random Rab in an email to VentureBeat. “Seems like they have no ethical boundaries.”

The musician has reached out to Grant repeatedly, but to date, his song has not been removed from the company’s demo video.

UPDATE: Curebit has released a statement saying, “As of an hour ago, we have come to an agreement on acceptable licensing terms with Random Rab for the music we used, and an apology.”

We’re sincerely hoping that this is the last instance of Curebit’s IP-stealing habits that will come across our desk. Picking on a small startup isn’t as much fun as it looks like, folks; we just wish everyone could get along — and be honest, work hard, and own up to their mistakes.

]]>0Curebit apologizes for theft, but leaves something outCurebit’s at it again, stealing more than code this timehttp://venturebeat.com/2012/01/30/curebit-random-rab/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/30/curebit-random-rab/#commentsMon, 30 Jan 2012 17:11:56 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=383645Curebit, the Y Combinator friend-referral startup that got busted over the weekend for stealing code and design work from web megashop 37signals, has been caught stealing again, this time from an independent musician. The startup used music from Random Rab, a San Francisco-based electronic artist, in its demo video. According to Random Rab, Curebit didn’t […]
]]>Curebit, the Y Combinator friend-referral startup that got busted over the weekend for stealing code and design work from web megashop 37signals, has been caught stealing again, this time from an independent musician.

According to Random Rab, Curebit didn’t contact the artist before nabbing his music, nor are they responding to requests to remove his music from their promo video on YouTube. In now-deleted tweets, the musician said Curebit had gotten in touch with him and attempted to “buy him off.” However, that offer was apparently rejected, and no one from Curebit has responded to Random Rab’s simple request, as stated below.

UPDATE: Curebit has released a statement saying, “As of an hour ago, we have come to an agreement on acceptable licensing terms with Random Rab for the music we used, and an apology.”

“Mr. Grant, I recently saw the article about you stealing code,” writes Random Rab on Twitter to Curebit founder Allan Grant. “You also have stolen MY music for your video. Please remove!”

In an email to VentureBeat, Random Rab wrote, “They are using my song illegally in their video … I certainly gave them no permission. Seems like they have no ethical boundaries.”

Grant excused Curebit’s behavior, saying the 37signals work was used because a) Curebit was just a small startup and b) the design was for an A/B test.

In a colorful Twitter stream, DHH retorted, “There is no valid way to rip off people’s designs and have it be ok. Not ‘We’re small;’ not ‘We’re A/B testing.’”

In an email exchange with VentureBeat, DHH and others later expressed concern that Curebit’s founders’ actions (and responses) indicated not a one-time slip-up over an intellectual property dispute, but a general disregard for the value of others’ work.

Curebit investor Dave McClure wrote in response to that debacle that he hoped the Internet (and DHH) would give Grant et al. the chance “to show they can learn from their mistakes and change.” We hope that Grant et al. will give the Internet a good reason to believe that, as well, but this latest revelation isn’t giving us much hope.

Thanks to our anonymous tipster for first pointing out this news over the weekend. Got a hot tip for VentureBeat’s staff to investigate? Reach out to us at tips@venturebeat.com.

]]>0Curebit’s at it again, stealing more than code this timeIngk Labs rescues technology behind SwapThing to build the next eBay (exclusive)http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/21/ingk-labs-swapthing-ip/
http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/21/ingk-labs-swapthing-ip/#commentsThu, 22 Dec 2011 00:04:39 +0000http://venturebeat.wordpress.com/?p=368538Proving that one man’s trash is another’s treasure, New York-based incubator Ingk Labs has salvaged an e-commerce patent gem from a defunct startup. It hopes to use that second-hand technology to corner the online-bartering market and take on eBay and Amazon. Ingk Labs rescues undervalued intellectual property (IP) from dying startups, and then brings its […]
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Proving that one man’s trash is another’s treasure, New York-based incubator Ingk Labs has salvaged an e-commerce patent gem from a defunct startup. It hopes to use that second-hand technology to corner the online-bartering market and take on eBay and Amazon.

Ingk Labs rescues undervalued intellectual property (IP) from dying startups, and then brings its IP buys back to life as new companies. Today, it has resurrected the technology behind SwapThing, a now obsolete site for multi-user online exchanges.

The accelerator has acquired SwapThing’s IP for an undisclosed sum and will fold it into Barterpop, an Ingk Labs company slated for early 2012 launch. Barterpop will allow consumers and businesses to exchange goods and services in multi-party trades.

The motivation, Ingk Labs CEO Craig Alberino told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview, was to acquire a seminal patent in the barter space and protect Barterpop, a SwapThing competitor that Alberino hopes will grow to compete with the likes of Amazon and eBay.

The patent in question, Alberino explained, covers the process of multilateral online exchanges, and has already weathered numerous IP challenges.

What does that mean, exactly? Say that you want a laptop and you have two items to barter with, and Dylan is willing to trade his laptop but doesn’t want your items. Barterpop, using the acquired IP, will play matchmaker and link you, Dylan and Heather, another barterer with items to satisfy you both, to create the perfect three-way swap. The experience will also enable retailers to insert themselves in between two consumers to complete a three-way trade.

The market opportunity for a barter site is on the rise, Alberino argued, even though he admitted that people before him, dating back to the early 2000s, have tried and failed to create a home-run swap site. “Barter is up in a down economy that has left many short on cash but rich in talent and treasures,” he said.

Ingk Labs has lined up investors to support the Barterpop venture and believes it now owns the technology and the IP to dominate the field. The logic goes that if Amazon or eBay were to enter the swapping market, and Alberino is confident they will, the companies would be forced to license Barterpop’s technology.

In addition to Barterpop, Ingk Labs will launch 11 more new companies in 2012 — three of them already have funding — by applying its dumpster-dive-like approach to IP rescue and acceleration.

Ingk Labs was founded in 2006, though the company has only focused its attentions on IP rescue in the past year. SwapThing founder Jessica Hardwick will join Ingk Labs in an advisory role as part of the IP acquisition deal.

Device maker Samsung says an Australian judge who banned the sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in that country does not know the basic facts of the case, and her reasoning is “grossly unjust.” Lawyers for Samsung are appealing a temporary injunction that has frozen the company out of the market due to claims that Samsung “slavishly copied” the iPad when creating its own tablet, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Samsung’s attorneys claim the judge in the case did not properly evaluate the merits of Apple’s infringement suit before issuing an injunction, which “stopped dead,” any efforts by the company to sell its tablet computers in Australia.

“We contend that the primary judge made a series of fundamental errors in her disposition of the interlocutory application. They were all errors of principle,” Samsung’s lawyer told the court.

A final hearing is not scheduled until March of 2012, and Samsung would be prevented from selling the tablet in Australia until the matter is resolved. The company’s lawyers want to undo this ruling and speed up the time table for a final ruling.

While Samsung continues to fight in the legal arena, others are left to wonder just how closely the company copied the iPad. Samsung, which produces the A6 chips that will be in future Apple iOS devices, maintains the originality of the intellectual property in its product. Apple’s quadcore A6 chips are produced by Samsung in its Austin, TX foundry, and are the brains that power applications on the phone. Despite the tense relationship, Apple is still dependent upon Samsung to manufacture the chips, but has rival TSMC has begun making test batches, according to EE Times, which would give Apple significant leverage in the future.

However, it’s not the first time that Samsung has been accused of stalking Apple.

Check out this picture of a Samsung store in Italy with several logos for Apple’s Safari browser printed on the back wall. This is important, because at the very least it indicates that Samsung is very reckless with its brand, or it could further indicate the extent to which the company really does follow Apple’s every move.